Test Setup

Test Setup

As usual, the following are the specs of our trusty graphics card test bed system:

Intel Core i7-975 (3.33GHz)

Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P motherboard

3 x 1GB DDR3-1333 G.Skill memory in triple channel mode

Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive

Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Test Notes:

NVIDIA has announced that the GeForce GTX 650 Ti will be pitted squarely against AMD's Radeon HD 7770, which currently retails for US$119, $30 less than the GTX 650 Ti's launch price.

Aside from comparisons against the competition, we'll be very interested to see where the GTX 650 Ti falls in relation to the GTX 650 and GTX 660, the two cards immediately below and above its SKU. Its GK106 core suggests it might be close to the GTX 660, but its weaker memory interface bus and subsequently lower memory bandwidth might hold it back.

We'll also be very interested in seeing if ASUS' custom cooler is worth the extra money and chassis space, or if designs more similar to NVIDIA's compact reference design will be sufficient.

Since the target group of users for these cards aren't likely to game at very high resolutions or with multiple monitors, we've also tested the GTX 650 Ti, GTX 650 and Radeon HD 7770 cards at the resolution of 1680 x 1050 pixels to give an idea of how they would fare. We didn't have time to test the speedier cards at this mainstream resolution, but it's sufficient to say that they are much more powerful and won't face issues addressing game play at this resolution.

NVIDIA has actually highlighted 1920 x 1200 pixels as the resolution of choice for the GTX 650 Ti and as such, we'll be looking very closely at how the GTX 650 Ti performs there.